COM 473 Courses Fall '16

Note: COM 473 Can be repeated for credit provided the course title is different.

COM 473: Advanced Audio & Video Production. Professor Hammer.

In this course, students will build on previous knowledge and experience working with audio and video, using professional equipment and editing tools to construct a series of creative projects. Course topics and readings will include genre theory, film theory, and sound studies. Students will learn to use professional hardware (cameras, audio recorders, microphones, lighting, etc.) and software (Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe Audition) to prepare them for professional media production situations. Students should expect to do both individual and collaborative work in this class. Course projects will include music videos, sound design for film, and documentaries. Some previous experience with audio and video editing, though not required, is highly recommended.

COM 473: Communications Capstone Project. Professor Knight.

The Communications and Digital Media capstone is designed to synthesize the knowledge, design thinking and research skills learned in the courses comprising the student’s degree program. Students in the course will develop a semester-long project which may be critical or creative in nature. The projects will be executed in three stages with feedback
and discussion at each stage: 1) a full planning brief to propose a project, 2) project development and execution and 3) project finalization and presentation. Students are expected to discuss, present and critique their work with the highest level of professionalism and implement research strategies that contribute to the overall finished project.

Students in the course will meet weekly, report on the progress of projects, discuss research and screen prototype media for peer and faculty critique. At the conclusion of the semester, students present their capstone projects to the Communication Studies community.

COM 473: Digital Media and Electing a President. Professor Parry.

Media places an important role in public formation, one might even say that without media there can be no public. Media is the means by which people talk to each other, form opinions, and coordinate action. In this class we will look at the roll that media plays in democracy, specifically within the context of the role that digital media plays in presidential campaigns. The 2016 election cycle will provide us with a unique opportunity to understand how campaigns use/abuse digital media to convince/persuade/manipulate voters in an effort to win a national election.

Communication builds and perpetuates connections—connections among people, ideas, technologies, and media objects. This is nothing new, of course. From clay tablets to scrolls to the first books, humans have used communication technologies to represent ideas to be shared with others. Internet and web technologies, however, have transformed the
speed with which humans can communicate to create personal connections. Mobile technologies feed into the immediacy of those connections. As the Nancy Baym states, “the digital age is distinguished by rapid transformations in the kinds of technological mediation through which we encounter one another” (p. 1).

How do we make sense of these changes? How do they transform what we think about communication and the communities those communications serve? How do they change what it means to participate in a mediated society? What are the new terms and ideas that can help us understand what we see happening in public networked communication?

In Participatory Culture, Online Communities, and the Practices of Social Media Research (#popf16), we are going to consider what it means to communicate in digital spaces and how such communication contributes to the creation of personal connections. In doing so, we will consider ideas on off-line and virtual communities, social networks,
participatory culture, fandom, and social justice. We will engage directly with a variety contemporary archiving tools that afford netnographic research and sophisticated data visualization and learn how to interpret that data using various methodologies. Ultimately, we will come to a significantly more nuanced understanding of how people leverage digital spaces, like Twitter and Instagram, for a multitude of complex communication goals.

#popf16 is a course that encourages exploration, discovery, and curiosity. By exploring new opportunities for communicating, by discovering new communities and opportunities, and by allowing our curiosity to lead us in new directions, we will realize more fully what it means to communicate for and in digital spaces. No prior technological experience is necessary, nor is any expected.